Sunday, April 26, 2009

Feedjit Widget Added to Blog yesterday/Pakistan as a Failed State with Nuclear Weapons/Meban Faber Mention in Barron's/

Some may notice that I just installed a Feedjit widget late yesterday that lets me know the general location in the world of someone reading my blog, and the post that they were interested in reading if they found the blog by virtue of a search engine inquiry. If I receive a lot of interest on a particular topic, I may devote more time to writing about it in the future. If anyone wants to exclude themselves from this, it is easy, just click "option" in the Feedjit area on the right hand side and then click exclude my browser. If you keep that cookie which is created by your desire to be excluded, then it will not identify your location on the next log in. I have for example excluded my own browser so the widget will not note me visiting or writing my own blog. Some may already know that anyplace that you go on the web knows the general area where you come from. I just wanted to see if anyone was reading this blog to make it worth my time writing it. I write and type extremely fast, but it still takes time to do it.

Over the years I have read articles written by foreign policy experts claiming that a failure to stand up to some potential threat would likely have the same result as Chamberlain's agreement with Hitler at Munich in 1938, when the British Prime Minister gave Hitler the Sudenland in the false hope that it would satiate Hitler's aggression.Munich Agreement - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Sometimes, I disagree with the assessment, as in the case of Vietnam, but I agree that the Munich appeasement argument is applicable to Pakistan's agreement with the Taliban to cede control over the Swath valley in the Tribal Region in exchange for the Taliban to lay down their arms. The Taliban took this as a sign of weakness and almost immediately took control over a neighboring region by armed force, an area called Buner, just sixty miles from the capital city. CNN.com NYTimes.com csmonitor.comIn a society bordering on a failed state, it does not take that many determined souls to seize control, as long as they are ruthless, violent and determined to do so, as witnessed by Lenin's successful seizure of control over Russia in the 1917 revolution. Russian Revolution (1917) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia The Taliban are at least as ruthless and violent as the followers of Lenin. The Taliban appears to me to have greater ambitions now, the takeover of Pakistan, sooner or later. A failed state with nuclear weapons controlled by what many perceive to be violent fanatics presents a clear and present danger to national security. While the U.S. has been concerned about the use of the Tribal areas in Pakistan as a training ground for terrorists that might later attack the U.S., the far greater danger is the takeover of Pakistan by extremists.

The Center for Disease Control confirmed that the 8 high school students from NYC did test positive for the new swine flu strain. Their symptoms were reported as mild. NYTimes.com

The CDC announced earlier today 20 confirmed cases in the U.S. so far. CBS News

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services will reportedly announce a public health emergency in the U.S. later today.

Frank Rich noted a new fact for me in his column that connects the adoption of torture to the desire to secure any information connecting Iraq to 9/11. NYTimes.com I reserve judgment on drawing conclusions until I have more information. Ron Suskind made similar allegations in a recent interview. Rich relies on a statement allegedly made by a Major in the Army, a psychiatrist, assigned to the interrogation team at Gitmo that pressure to use torture came from Washington to link Iraq to 9/11. To me, while the sanctioning of torture at the highest level of U.S. government is bad enough, this would be even worse if it turns out to be true. Is Conservatism Consistent with Support of Bush's Enhanced Interrogation Techniques/NVS, EBAY, COP, Nestle, JNJ, EMC

For anyone interested in Faber's strategy, it is discussed in this article: Seeking Alpha

Eric Savitz, the Tech Trader columnist at Barron's, seemed a tad more positive in his column until I got to the end of it. The VMware (VWM) publicly traded subsidiary of EMC had a gloomy report last week and a dreary forecast for the next quarter. Eric points out that this could be trouble for other tech companies that are "enterprise- centric" like Cisco, Oracle and Hewlett. Barrons.comI sold my Cisco position recently.

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About Me

I am no longer in a capital accumulation phase. My key investment objectives are capital preservation and income generation.
I started to buy stocks in the late 1960s.
I have a balanced worldwide portfolio with a considerable allocation to cash. Starting in December 2016, I started to reallocate out of cash and into high quality short and intermediate term bonds and FDIC insured CDs using a ladder strategy.
I have been paring my stock allocation, selling gradually into the robust stock market rally occurring since the U.S. election.
In this blog, I will be discussing only a sample of my recent stock trades. I will be discussing almost all of my bond and CD trades.

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I am not a financial advisor but simply an individual investor who has been managing my own money since I was a teenager. In this blog, I am acting solely as a financial journalist focusing on my own investments. The information contained in this blog is not intended to be a complete description or summary of all available data relevant to making an investment decision. Instead, I am merely expressing some of the reasons underlying the purchase or sell of securities. Nothing in this blog is intended to constitute investment or legal advice or a recommendation to buy or to sell. All investors need to perform their own due diligence before making any financial decision which requires at a minimum reading original source material available at the SEC and elsewhere. For purchases of bonds and preferred stocks, the prospectuses need to be reviewed until fully understood by the investor.